Colliding Worlds
by ricebol
Summary: AU Mashup ficlets, where duplicates abound and reason is scarce. 4: Something from Nothing. Ever get the feeling that somewhere, someone else is living the life you deserve?
1. Synchronicity

**Top Notes: **These are all small ficlets written for various AU-mashup prompts. They are standalone but benefit from knowledge of the AUs they involve. Basically, utter and complete crack. Have fun.  
**Disclaimer: **Don't own Watchmen. Seriously.

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**Summary:** Canon Dan and Ror stumble over zombie!Ror in the street.  
**AUs:** Canon, Zombieverse,  
**Rating/Warnings:** K+, general nonsense, applied phlebotinum.  
**Characters/Pairings:** Dan, Rorschach, zombie!hoboschach.

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**synchronicity**

.

"Unbelievable," Dan says, keeping a careful watch on the crowd they're moving through, wary and edgy and on the lookout for too-pale faces, too-pale hands. They've seen a few of them already, have no idea how dangerous they really are; it's hard information to wheedle out of people who've been living with the situation for months, who don't get why you don't know, don't understand. "Bad enough Jon managed to screw up like this, but to land us in the middle of a late night _horror movie_..."

Next to him, Rorschach just grunts noncommittally, hands fisted in his pockets, trying not to notice the strangely wide berth the crowd is giving him.

"Almost makes me want to, uh. Check on myself. Ourselves. Make sure we got through it." It's a morbid thought, but the idea of living other lives naturally carries with it the fact of facing other dangers, and for some reason he just feels like he _needs to know_ and...

Another noise, this one vaguely annoyed. "Sentimental, Daniel. Useless information. Not staying here."

Dan glances down. "You're telling me it wouldn't bother you if you found out-"

"No," comes the short and certain reply.

Dan bites back a response; the conversation lapses to silence, both too far on guard to justify small talk, on too much of a time constraint to waste it on philosophical ramblings. It's a solid five minutes of uneventful walking before Dan's sliding dodge of an errant pedestrian lands him right next to one of the - what are they even called? He's sure 'zombie' is probably inaccurate _and_ offensive but it's the only word his mind can cough up, faced with the reality: ghastly and hollow-faced and eyes burning like cinders and he's so _small_, that's why Dan hadn't seen him in time, a half-head below the rest of the crowd-

Small and fierce and _looking straight at him._

He's forced down the shudder and shouldered past before he can catch the recognition in the look, and that's just as well. Has a second to think _(Hang on, I know him, I've seen him outside my place before-)_, to consider the implications of that sort of synchronicity, before a chill creeps its way, all cold fingers and roiling gooseflesh, down the back of his neck. It's another half-second before he realizes that he's walking alone.

When he turns back, Rorschach is two feet from the man, staring him down from the expressionless depths of the mask, blots swimming furiously. The corpse shifts his sign over his shoulder and stares straight back, firelit eyes jumping with a strange mixture of hostility and confusion that reminds Dan, synaesthetically enough, of the low and dangerous sound of Rorschach's voice on the rare occasions that Dan manages to completely throw him off his guard.

There's a long stretch of stillness, the crowd breaking around them to reform on the other side; Dan's twitching to end this bizarre showdown, visions of every horrible zombie movie he's ever seen floating through his brain, and he really doesn't want to have to drag a mangled and screaming vigilante the rest of the way, through populated streets and without any time to stop for first aid and...

"Rorschach?" he finally asks; they both turn in response, but Dan is so very much not processing that right now. He makes a gesture with one glove, a vague summons. "Come on man, we have to keep moving if we're gonna get back."

Rorschach just mumbles something incoherent, shoving his fists harder into his pockets; turns and follows. He doesn't say another word the entire way, no matter how cleverly and insistently Dan tries to engage him, something unsettling and strange clinging to him that hadn't been there before.

In ten years, watching his friend's mugshots flash across the television screen, Dan will understand - but for now, they have a trans-temporal spacetime anomaly to catch.

.

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_(c) ricebol 2009_


	2. Tales From the Twilight Zone Corner

**Summary:** When all the AUs collide, the freakiest freaks get sequestered into a corner.  
**AUs:** Wing!Dan AU, Medieval Fantasy AU, Vampire!Walter AU, Superpowers AU, Imaginary Friend AU, Zombieverse, Possomschach AU.  
**Rating/Warnings:** K+, general nonsense, pigeon abuse.  
**Characters/Pairings:** Dan, Rorschach, Rorschach, Rorschach, Rorschach, 20 pigeons, Rorschach, Rorschach, Dan, Rorschach.

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**tales from the twilight zone corner**

. **  
**

"So, ah… what are you?" asks the only version of Dan to be relegated to this corner of the room. His wings rustle restlessly.

The elf-eared version of his partner shifts. "Half-Sidhe," he replies, because bald honesty seems to be the order of the day.

"What is that?"

"It's a… a kind of faerie."

"Sure got that right," barks some version or another of the Comedian as he walks by, laughing around his cigar and not even pausing to see if the hit lands. Dan and the vampire both glare after him, but the intended target doesn't get the joke at all.

.

It becomes a guessing game.

The Rorschach that wanders over covered in clinging, relentless pigeons is relatively easy to figure out. He doesn't even mind the speculative attention, because it distracts him from the endless blathering on and on and _on_ about raisin bread and popcorn. Dan finds himself petting the birds idly, and that's okay too.

This newcomer though, they're having a hard time with. Looks normal. Acts normal, or Rorschach-normal anyway. Then the pale one on the end puts his mask up over his nose, and the newcomer stares and stares and stares some more.

"…what're you in for?" Dan finally asks, conceding defeat, trying to play it like a joke.

The newcomer pulls off his gloves then, and the ink swirls and pools there, too – and they understand.

.

"Another vampire?" asks the first, curiosity piqued at the sight of a second deathly-pale face.

A grunt, settling into the only free chair left. "Metabolic disorder."

"That sounds like a cop-out to me," says Dan, ruffling up his feathers. "If this disorder had a close second-cousin in mythical terms, what would it be?"

The word coughed out around a sugar cube sounds a lot like 'zombie', but they can't be sure.

.

"Christ, what the hell happened to you two?"

They make no attempt to bring over extra chairs, just slump together onto the floor next to the rest, and it's probably for the best because these flat-backed chairs wouldn't accommodate the thick ratlike tail snaking out from under Rorschach's trenchcoat or the fan of feathers that's making it hard for this Dan to even sit on the floor.

"Goddamn Adrian happened," Owl-Dan says, reaching to smooth feathers down in unfamiliar places. Rorschach jabs him in the ribs with a frightening furry elbow. "Right, right, I know, can't talk about that. Timelines. I know."

"Would still like to hear," says the pigeon-tree, head cocked to the side in a strangely birdlike fashion.

The two on the floor look at each other; Owl-Dan swallows. "No, I really don't think you would."

.

The golem leans forward in his chair, scanning the crowd.

"Looking for someone," says the fuzzy, not-a-rat Rorschach, and he'd been very insistent about that, definitely not a rat.

"Walter," the first mumbles, distracted. "One of your pigeons," he continues, turning to glare at the bird-decked version of himself. "...has torn a hole in me with its claws. Need repair work done."

The vampire tears his eyes away from the sixteenth – _sixteenth_ – sugar cube he's watched the zombie unwrap for himself, and that just isn't goddamned fair. "Walter exists separately for you?"

The golem nods; it's 1975 or earlier for most of them, so this is simply a curiosity. Only the Possum is jealous.

.

"You're the only one with no magic in you," the half-fae observes out of the blue, narrowing his eyes at the second undead among them.

"Told you. Metabolic disorder."

"The rest of you have it clinging, and you," he nods to the golem, "Are soaked in it. The basis for your existence. But he doesn't have any at all."

The zombie digs in his pocket for more sugar; finally comes up empty. "Hrm. People don't need magic to work nightmares."

.

He's standing suddenly, swiping blindly at the birds on his shoulders, until one of them in particular finally flies off. He glares after it angrily.

"What was that all about?"

"...was having impure thoughts about you, Daniel."

There's a pause, where everyone present is trying to put this together.

"The _pigeon, _" he clarifies.

.

The golem puts his hand up – and they suppose it is a hand, even without bones and tendons to explain its shape – to call a pause. He's looking at the vampire. "You're saying that you and your Daniel are..."

The vampire shrugs. "Assumed that was true for all of us."

Attention shifts to each in turn; the pigeon-covered Rorschach is silent on the subject, the fae shifts uncomfortably, and the zombie coughs with far too convenient timing for someone who shouldn't technically need to breathe very often. When they look to the winged version of Daniel, he just shrugs. "Yeah, I mean... yeah."

"Disgusting," mutters the opossum unconvincingly from the floor, dragging rough claws through his fur as if chasing after fleas.

.

"We should put up a sign," Daniel suggests after an hour has passed, and he's just put the vampire and the zombie in opposite corners of their little space because they'd found more sugar and the jealousy had ballooned into death threats, and he's laughing but he's tired. "Rejects from reality: all are welcome."

"Hmf," says the golem, fiddling with the seam on his glove.

Another pigeon goes flying, pinged across the room with deadly accuracy. Dan suspects that this time, it was just for fun.

"Make our own reality," grumbles the vampire, eying the sugar crystals caked onto his fingertips. Doesn't lick them.

Dan shifts from one foot to the other; feels cold fingers from the other side running curiously down his feathers. The owl-Dan on the floor has settled onto his back, arm-wings spread flat. The fae looks up at him, eyes a mess of homesickness and swirling gold, and bizarre as it is, all of it makes sense.

"...yeah. Yeah, I guess we do."

.

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_(c) ricebol 2009_


	3. Mismatched

**Summary:** Lost in the dark and general confusion.  
**AUs:** Poor Hand verse, Zombieverse.  
**Rating/Warnings:** K+, no warnings.  
**Characters/Pairings:** Dan, Z!Rorschach.

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**mismatched**

. **  
**

He doesn't mean to lose his partner in the spiraling maze of the city – it's a maze he knows, has navigated hand-to-the-wall for years now, and it should be a simple thing to just keep up. But he's tired; tired, and overwhelmed with a sudden swell of sympathy for Rorschach, who's had to manage a day job and crimefighting in balance for years and years. Here he is, three days into _and would you like naan with that? _ and he's already dragging, feet heavy on the asphalt.

It's not just the job. It's the weight of everything – the loss of his life as he knew it, the shock of discovering he'd been had, the pressure of trying to fix it and then, on top of it all, whatever this idiotic _thing _between him and Rorschach is turning into.

So he stops, tries to catch his breath. One hand rests on the brickwork, and he closes his eyes behind the goggles, willing the dancing sparks there to disappear. Just a minute, just five minutes, just–

When he opens them again, Rorschach's in front of him, expectant and somehow more still than he's ever been.

"Christ," Dan mutters, a step back against the wall, one hand over his suddenly hammering heart. His nerves have been shot since the, well, the _bug_ incident, and cannot handle surprises in their current state. "Trying to kill me?"

He can see the shadows pool where the mask furrows its brows. "Of course not. Concerned when we got separated. Thought you'd be glad to…" Rorschach trails off, cocking his head to one side. "Feeling all right, Daniel?"

"Yeah, sure, just. Things have been a little rough?" he says, with the tone of explaining something that shouldn't need to be explained. Surely Rorschach can understand why he'd be a little on edge, after this morning – even if he hadn't quite believed him about the bug, something had obviously been wrong.

Instead, Rorschach just steps further into his personal space than he should be comfortable with, what with the events of the last few days. Puts the back of his hand against Dan's exposed cheek, probably checking for fever, and hell, since when does the great untouchable bastard voluntarily initiate contact like this? Since when does he lean in so _close_?

"God, you're freezing," Dan says, the words tumbling out before he can catch them, shocked into bluntness by the way the leather's leaching the heat right out of his skin.

A long, considering look, inkblots swimming more slowly than they should be; then the hand is withdrawn. "Come on," Rorschach says, stepping back. Dan exhales sharply, in relief and something less tangible. "Not well. Going home."

It's a block or two before Dan realizes they're headed for his old address, not Rorschach's. He pulls up short. "Where are we going?"

"Said already," and annoyance is creeping into his tone. "Home. Owl's Nest."

"That's not… Rorschach. I lost the house, remember?" And this is so surreal, and maybe he _is_ sick and delirious or maybe Rorschach is. "I've been staying with you?"

This time the icy hands don't stop at skin; they shove his goggles up onto his head and lift his eyelids and a swarm of inkblots regard him, narrowing into his eyes. _Checking for concussion_, his brain supplies, and for just a second he thinks that maybe, oh god, maybe this has all been a dream, maybe he hasn't lost his home and his life and he hasn't been changing clothes in an alleyway and making absurd advances on his partner and _being molested by insects _and–

Then Rorschach glances around to see if he has cover, lifts his mask up over his brow to give him clearer vision because dark irises and pupils are hard to tell apart at night and how does he even see through the mask anyway–

And Dan finds himself regarded by flaming eyes in a corpse's face, brows pinched in incongruous concern, stinking of rot and blood, and he isn't even sure, later, how long or how far he runs.

.

In the alley, Rorschach sighs, and puts his mask back down – thinks of wings and owls and rats and bugs, and serial killers and cattlehands and cybernetic constructions, of data shifting across a faceplate and the sound of wolves.

It's nearly 3 AM, and his own Daniel is apparently still missing. It's going to be a long night.

.

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_(c) ricebol 2009_


	4. Something from Nothing

**Summary:** Ever get the feeling that somewhere, someone else is living the life you deserve?  
**AUs:** Void!schach AU Dan, canon Rorschach. FFnet won't let me link to the Voidschach stories, so my best advice is to search under the 'supernatural' tag in the LJ community watchfic_dir. To briefly summarize: Voidschach is an AU version of Rorschach who is just a human-shaped void under the costume, with ambiguous and arguably malevolent intentions, and who is partially responsible for Dan having lost his hand when he tried to reach into the void and Ror didn't stop him.  
**Rating/Warnings:** T, language.  
**Characters/Pairings:** Dan, Rorschach.

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**something from nothing  
**

. **  
**

Dan's awakened in the middle hours of the night – the crazy hours, the bloody full moon hours and it seems like it's always Halloween these days, eternally the witching time – by a clattering sound from down in the... what, the kitchen? He stumbles out of bed and through the door and down the stairs, still unsure of his balance with only one hand to run on the banister.

It's a dangerous way to go about things. There's an intruder in his home and he's bumbling into it without a thought or plan but he's been just this side of irrational for weeks, maybe just a touch too close to self-destructive. And it doesn't help when he peers through the cracked kitchen door to find a frighteningly familiar form rooting through his cupboards, a hat over a mask and trenchcoat, all draped around what he knows is so much terrifying nonexistence. Digging through the cabinets where he keeps his cereal.

That makes no sense. The whole situation makes no sense on so many levels that he can't address any of them, so he just braces the stump of his forearm on the doorframe and does his best to glower. "What are you looking for?" he asks, expecting the usual death's-head grinning 'nothing' in reply.

Instead: "Frosted Flakes. Appear to have run out."

Dan rubs his fingers over his eyes. Dream, has to be a dream. Except it isn't, and he knows that, in the way he can feel the grit of the floor under his bare feet and smell the reek of unwashed leather. "What are you _doing_ here?"

Rorschach looks up, seems taken aback in as much as the mask can show it. Which is, Dan knows, precisely what the being under it _wants_ it to show. There are no accidents here.

"...picked the lock instead of kicking the door in," he offers, faint confusion in the non-voice. As if that makes this all better, as if that explains why he would show himself_ here_. He shifts from one foot to the other, like a real person, as Dan allows his expression to darken. "Thought we were patrolling tonight?"

Dan hits the light switch without warning, flooding the room with all the blinding fury of 100-watt fluorescence. He's been doing some home improvements.

"Patrolling?" He's maybe being too loud, but he's suddenly furious, and if Rorschach wants to eat him now then the last few beers still in his system say _fine, okay_. He swings his mutilated arm up into view. "Like this? What do you expect me to do, strap on a goddamned chainsaw and be good to go?"

The cereal box hits the counter, released in what is honestly a pretty good imitation of shock. "Daniel," the creature says, suddenly quiet and careful, crossing the kitchen toward him. "What– how, what happened?"

Good god, that really does sound like concern. It sounds a _lot_ like concern, like he'd always–

"You know perfectly well what happened, what the hell game are you playing? _Don't touch me_," he practically growls, pulling sharply away when those gloved hands (gloves filled with nothing, ravenous nothing) reach for his arm.

"...don't understand," Rorschach says after a minute, his hands still poised midair, head tilting to try to find an angle of view. His voice sounds distressed. "Were fine last night."

"I haven't seen you in a week." _Too short by far_, his tone says.

Rorschach stands for a moment, then withdraws, taking a step back. Dan relaxes incrementally. The inkblots cast around the room, linger on the calendar and on the evidence of Dan's attempts at coping, littered around the trashcan and on the counters. "Something's wrong," he says, reaching to pick one of the empty bottles up by the neck. _Distressed_ no longer adequately describes him. "Something's gotten mixed up."

"I don't know," Dan says, and he's proud of the next bit. "_Nothing_ seems wrong to me."

Rorschach shakes his head, visibly agitated and obviously not getting the joke. He looks back at Dan's arm, twitching in place like there's something, some invisible cord yanking him in that direction. He takes a step toward him.

Dan takes a step back. He can do this all night if he has to, but he hesitates on the next advance; there's something unguarded in the way Rorschach's moving. It doesn't fit, and it's disarming.

"Please," he says, and the word sounds foreign in that voice, sounds like he has trouble forcing it out. "Let me see?" __

He's doing it on purpose, Dan thinks, but he still feels a little like a mouse hypnotized by the owl's killing cry as he stands his ground and allows the hands to settle on his forearm, turn it carefully over. They're warm through the leather. Dan wants to scream.

Instead, he takes a shaky breath. "Admiring your handiwork?" he asks, as evenly as he can manage.

Rorschach freezes as the implication makes contact, then jumps back, hands in the air, dropping his arm like a hot stone. He makes a strange, strangled sound, from somewhere low in his chest. It's too much. The reaction is too honest, too _human_, and Dan feels his connection to reality eroding, allowing him to consider the impossible. It really _had _sounded like concern, and the thought makes him feel... feel...

Makes him feel, period, clear through the last two weeks' haze.

Rorschach is pacing the kitchen, fishing something from his pocket and unwrapping it with fumbling fingers, and then it really _is_ too much because he reaches to pull the mask up and shove the sugar cube in underneath and the bastard _has a face. _

Has. A face.

A _face_.

Dan finds himself laughing, hysterical, high and whistling. He staggers back against the counter, reality deserting him entirely along with balance. He hears another noise, something like alarm, and this time he doesn't fight the arms when they latch onto him, catching him up and lowering him safely to the kitchen floor. The warmth makes sense now, and he's surrounded by it, by every hope he'd ever had about his partner, every wish he's made in the last horrible while.

_Let it just be a dream, _ he'd said, shaking under his covers each night, startling at every shifting shadow. _Let me wake up and find out none of it's really happened. _

But the stub of his forearm is still cold where it scrapes along the floor, no broad palm to catch him up and hold his weight, nothing but nothing. Hovering nearby, the bottom half of a human face, rough-featured and stubbly and flawed and _perfect_, its mouth forming a wordless frown of worry. It's so close, and Dan can feel warm breath curling over his cheekbones. In and out.

"You're a real person," he blurts out, the words chopped by the laughter.

The mouth opens, hesitates, closes again. Then Rorschach nods, carefully. He seems unsure how to respond, otherwise.

Dan bites his lip. It's too much to ask, it really is, and he has to be dreaming. "When's your birthday?"

"March 21st," the man (_man_, not just emptiness shaped like one) curled over him says, and it feels like he doesn't want to give the secret up. He does anyway. "1940."

"What was your father's name?"

"That's–" Personal. More than Dan would ever have asked him, further than he would have pried, even before he knew that there was no father to ask after.

The silence stretches for just a little too long.

"...Charlie," he finally says, and the name's no more substantial than the breath it rides on. "Never knew him though."

"Fuck," Dan says, and ducks his head. "Just. Fuck."

An arm settles around his shoulders, awkwardly. Tightens around him when he doesn't shrug it off or skitter out from under it. "If you're screwing with me, I swear I'll..." The useless threat trails off, breaks about into something that sits between laughter and a child's hiccupped sobbing.

He feels Rorschach's head shake against his shoulder. "Something very wrong here," he repeats.

"Something," Dan says. "Yes. God."

.

"You can't stay, can you?"

Rorschach shifts next to him. He's put the gloves aside, the hat. His coat and jacket are unfastened from when Dan had needed to burrow his hand in and feel the warmth of skin there, skin and muscle and a body that would take a bullet and actually bleed. "No. Have a different... reality, I suppose. To try to get back to."

His arm is cradled carefully in those hands, fleshy normal hands with, of all things, a spatter of freckles over their backs. It's such an idiotic thing to focus on, but it's so human, so ordinary. The fingers probe delicately over the still-healing skin, almost reverent.

All the years he spent, thinking about the day he might finally be able to peel the latex back and find under it someone who he could call a brother, who cared for him, who would choke in fear if he fell in a fight or hold him still against shock in the aftermath. Instead, he'd only found so much of nothing.

Here, for at least a little while...

"There's another... me, there?" he asks, hand pressing his glasses back into his hairline.

Rorschach nods.

"And you, what, break into his house and steal his cereal?"

"...sometimes. When I haven't had anything else for a few days. Don't think he minds."

More of that harsh, dangerous laughter. "I wouldn't. God, if only."

"Can't stay, but..." the rough voice says, and Dan wonders how human vocal chords can even make that sound, that autumn noise of desolation and bitter winds screaming over the void. "Can sit with you here for a while. If you want."

Dan nods, smiling through what wants to be grief.

.

Outside in the street, nothing lingers. It crawls down alleys and through gutters, slipping like oil between the shale sidewalk stones and winds itself up railings. It looks up, at lit windows and dark ones alike.

It had plans tonight, but something has changed. Some madness of mirrors and dreams has wound its way around the house, and emotions more disgustingly positive than they've been in weeks are bubbling up through its windows and walls. Relief. Camaraderie. Affection. Half of what it feels is both familiar and unfamiliar at once, not Daniel's but something that vibrates like a half-wave, halfway out of time.

It is not worried. It is curious.

In the end though, it is no fonder of self-examination than any of its brethren, and it slinks away, leaving the full moon to spin its own curses tonight.

.

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_(c) ricebol 2010_


End file.
